Daring to Live

So much of my life has been lived apologizing for who I am, making others comfortable, being kind, doing the right thing, helping others, being sweet, making sure I don’t harm or upset others, taking care of their needs and being of service. Yet there have also been moments of vivid reality where I’ve blown the lid off my box and flown out…my solo adventures to the craziest places on the planet, from hitching in Rwanda, to sitting in the desert near Petra with nowhere to stay or go and watching life bring me a beautiful Arab man who fed us and let us stay in his home with his family. To the times I’ve leapt from my heart, and sometimes fallen on my face, but never regretted loving. To the creative ideas and manifestations, sometimes flops! In these times life has become a technicolour feast of magic and the more I stepped into the magic, the more magic happened.

Life is about daring greatly, about living. The thing about daring to live is that life conspires to support you. You don’t need heaps of money or certain circumstances. If you start truly living, everything in the universe will support you.

When you live with death close by, you take risks, you love, you speak the truth, you share from your heart, you hug, you kiss, you are spontaneous and edgy.

I spent time volunteering with people who had terminal illnesses as part of a charity called The Befriending Network in London. I visited my friends, hung out with them, helped them, talked them and mostly listened to their stories about their lives. It was the most poignant and beautiful time of my life. Those hours spent in a council flat with a Jamaican lady, or the northerner with an eye claimed by cancer who wore a face mask, were like walking through a curtain into another dimension. Life came into full focus. After being with my friends, the leaves on the trees were iridescent, the sky blue, the icy London breeze fragrant, with possibility, with opportunity and purpose.

Living with death in your pocket, which is the truth of life, you never know what is round the corner and so you truly live life. Life is the most outrageous experience in the universe. To live life on this planet is unbelievable. We owe it to existence to show up and truly taste life, to experience it in full screen, surround sound. All else is mere existing.

Ask yourself: if you had 3 weeks to live, what would you do? What would you change? What would you say?

When you put your life under the intense focus of death and a time limit, everything that is important comes into tight focus, and whatever is irrelevant, simply drops away. I’ve used this technique many times in my life, to get clear on what is truly important to me, and it works.

Some ideas to help you to dare to life:

Bring death close in. Answer those questions.

Do something outrageous

Go way beyond your comfort zone.

Write down 3 extreme dreams and do them.

Follow your heart’s calling

Find peace in all your relationships

Close the doors that need closing and open others

Do the unexpected

Do something different with your style and appearance

Try on different personalities with your friends

Rock your sense of normality, your deeply etched grooves and step out

Make 5 new friends

Throw a party or organise an event

Do something that is opposite to your usual creative pursuit

Dance to a new style of music

Do something you’ve always wanted to but never thought was possible

Be extra ordinary!Jump in, Step Out and Live Life. Get out of your own box and show up!

Shaking up your identity brings the greatest spiritual freedom as it puts you in touch with your true nature…the unchanging consciousness that is within all things. From this place, anything is possible.